Digital Victorian Periodical Poetry

Working-class poet and weaver. Pseudonym: A Fifeshire Forester. Lived in extreme poverty. Brother was the poet Alexander Bethune. Born in Upper Rankeillor in Monimail, Fife. Received no formal schooling. Father was an agricultural day labourer. Family moved to Lochend, near Loch of Lindores, in 1813. First occupation was stone breaking, and then had a weaving apprenticeship. Bethune started his own weaving business but it quickly failed and he returned to working again as a labourer. He wrote poems prolifically, and published in Scottish Christian Herald and Christian Instructor, as well as other periodicals. Contributed to Tales and Sketches of the Scottish Peasantry (1838). After falling ill with tuberculosis, he had to give up manual labour and tried to make a living by writing. Bethune’s collected poems was published posthumously in 1840 and 1841. Biographical information: ODNB. (AC)